


Last October

by smokingbomber



Series: I Guess This Is Growing Up [2]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Background Poly, Climate Change, Disasterfic, Environmental activism, Global Warming, In Fact Nonbinary Shapeshifter Zoisite, Multi, Natural Disasters, Nonbinary Zoisite, Outer Senshi Also Appear, Small Lady Cameo, The Only Ships That Even Kiss In This Thing Are Usamamo and Amizoi But Trust Me, There Is So Much Poly OMG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 17:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16123598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/pseuds/smokingbomber
Summary: CW: Disasterfic.Parts of this fic may be triggering due to the detailing of reasons to panic, reasons to grieve, and things that happen in a natural or manmade disaster, when the world is ending around you. No emotional quarter is given. I have prefaced the chapters most likely to be a problem with individual content warnings.Last October is set five hundred years from now, and uses somewhat sped-up worst-case-scenario official projections of the effects of climate change as a result of unchecked pollution, and the failure of a patchwork half-magic weather and sustainable energy system, and it applies them to the doomsday event that heralds the dawn of Crystal Tokyo. The Prince, Princess, Senshi, and Shitennou deal with preparing for it in their various ways, then work together to mitigate the damage as much as they can.UPDATEDwith artwork byi1976blunotte!





	1. Part 1: Before the End (Morning Passages)

**Author's Note:**

> **LONGER CONTENT WARNING:** This fic takes a tour bus straight through the end of the world and out the other side. I've attempted to make it worth it, but it gets implicitly graphic at times and MAY TRIGGER people who have lived through disasters both natural and manmade. All of the reactions contained herein are reactions to disaster and tragedy and unrelenting emergency situations that I've either had or have seen in other people in the middle of it. It's kind of horrible and has been cathartic to write because, I think, some of it's helped me scrape a little bit of the horror out of my soul. That said, **I don't want it to impress horror on anyone else's soul without them knowing what they're getting into.** It's VERY SAD, okay, and it HURTS, and please don't read it if it's going to damage you.
> 
> Chapter titles are songs, listed in the end notes as a soundtrack.
> 
>  **Thanks to my Beta Army:** floraone, jcdebound, ellorgast, and fadesinthesun.
> 
>  **Names And Pronouns Shenanigans Roll Call:**  
>  * Nik = Nephrite  
> * Sander = Zoisite (she/him/they depending on context)  
> * Jay = Jadeite duh  
> * Kal = Kunzite  
> * Secchan = Setsuna/Pluto  
> Yes, every switch back and forth from Silmil/GK/henshin name to modern name is intentional.
> 
> **500-years-ago prequel in 1999:**  
> [Drinking Games](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11845452)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Mars and Serenity.

## Part 1

### The week of Sunday, October 2nd, 2499

**1\. Morning Passages**

Over the centuries, the little park which held so many memories -- hemmed in as it was by highways and overpasses and culverts -- had been bought out and demolished and built upon, over and over again. The original concrete was long gone; the original park benches, clock tower, and fountain had long since been buried layers deep in fill and the crumbled skeletons of buildings. The ghosts of the old trees and grass, and the paths upon which she had walked, kissed, laughed, launched into space-- the patio upon which she had been standing when the future fell on her head--? She couldn't even see them in her mind’s eye anymore; her memory of the details had been continually overwritten for the past hundred years.

Usagi let her hand slide over the letters on the Arisugawa no Miya Memorial Park sign, then turned to survey the changing leaves.

A hundred years ago, one of the boys had managed, finally, to snap up the land it had been on. Already marshy, with the rotting foundation of the last-built structure being inexorably swallowed by the ground, they'd been making offers on it for years. The previous owner had only accepted when the land inevitably fell to the rising sea, the overpasses and highrises surrounding it long since having cracked and tumbled, the streets perilous with sinkholes and squelchy with backflow.

The boys had bought it for her, had sunk great pylons reinforced with magic into the flooded salt bog, had filled it and walled it and filled it again until it stood tall. Then they'd rebuilt the park of her memories and meetings, a labor of painstaking love to shore her up, and relieve her girls as a result.

It wasn't quite the same Arisugawa no Miya as the one of their youth, this tall island: accessible now only by boat and soaring walkway, its fountain was brackish and its trees and flowers mostly subtropical to tropical. Mostly: there were the maples and cherry trees Makoto had persuaded to live there, just for her, please; there were the roses Mamoru had always convinced to grow in curtains and fountains, though they had to be carefully maintained. The seasons that used to be late spring and early summer were too hot these days, and the winters too sudden and devastating.

No, not her old park, but a melancholy interstitial thing made up of museum-piece flora and the encroaching vegetation of the present reality, marching toward the future. It was a present-day that humanity had made for itself, despite her family's best efforts, despite the best efforts of the scientists and activists who tried to make people understand what would happen-- what they were causing-- and it hurt as much as it soothed.

The air, sharp and chilly, was a gift as much as the park itself: a gift to the long memory of the Earth and the life it had nurtured in so many different ways for so very long, and a gift to the Earth's people, and a gift to Usagi herself, and to her family. Like the park, it was made with so much love, but was ultimately an artificial thing, unsustainable. The autumn she walked through was lab-grown and developed and patched together from the pieces of ancient technology that still orbited the planet, crystals grown with the golden sorceries of Earth's distant past, and the records and magics of that Earth's ancient Moon.

Her family had created one last October for this Earth they loved so, one last October to chill the air and promise secrets, whispering of ghosts and bonfires on the hills, of candy apples and cinnamon.

She firmly cherished it all the more for its fleeting ephemeral beauty, not so different from the way the changing leaves of old had lasted less than a month before giving way to the bare trees of winter, their bony fingers reaching endlessly into grey skies. That this time it would be still more brief and bittersweet weighed heavily on her small, straight shoulders, but she was determined to glory in in this beautiful thing she'd been given-- roll around in it like it was yards and yards of freshly clean linen dried on a line in the sun--

Her tiny frame had, time and time again, proven it could bear the burdens of all the worlds and remain resolute, charged and woven throughout with the strength that came from the love and hope in her heart, and the love and belief of her friends. She was strong, she was determined; she loved, she hoped; she was firm, she was already a queen in all but name.

It didn't matter. Not even that impossible strength could change the fact that this precious season would be the last of its kind, real or artificial, for centuries.

Serenity gracefully lifted one small white hand to touch, with the gentle care reserved for butterfly wings and tissue lanterns in the rain, the edge of one of the shivering red maple leaves. It stilled under her fingertips, and she finally spoke into the breeze. Her voice was quiet and fragile enough that Rei thought the salt-scented air might carry it off entirely.

"What has the sacred fire told you?"

That was the most innocently cruel question Serenity could have asked. Above them, the skies were a pristine blue, deep at the top of the dome and lightening toward the horizon. The sun made the waters sparkle, made the broken windows in abandoned buildings glimmer like inlaid diamonds in the overgrowth that claimed them more every day.

Rei was silent for a long moment, the priestess keeping her hands on the sea wall and letting the spray lift and tangle her hair, letting it fill and release the loose kimono she wore over the hardy jeans and thick sweater she'd taken out of storage. Her hands stayed there, gripping the wall harder, hiding the shivering that had begun when Serenity had stilled that of the leaf, and Rei felt cold inside and out. 

It wasn't just what the fire told her. It was what Sander had told her about his-- her? their-- joint effort with Ami, the last time they had surfaced. It was the false reassurance of those calm skies, that beautiful sea.

She stood looking over the edge with the ocean's glittering mist caught on her hair and clothes, holding her breath for a moment as she watched watercraft on the bay -- no, on the islanded lake of a city, whose bay had swallowed her docks and streets and swollen her rivers -- and she knew no answer could ease the growing heartache in her best and oldest friend, could cure the vast sorrow of her queen. 

But Rei also knew that sorrow shared is sorrow lessened, so she eventually let her hands fall and stepped back, turning around. Her violet eyes shimmered bright with unshed tears, and met her Usagi-chan's wide blue ones-- eyes from which silver tears fell unrestrained and silent. Serenity didn't need an answer; she already knew.

She knew.

Rei's voice was thick and heavy, "Not long." The words came slowly, dragged like lead through viscous, clinging mud. "A week, maybe two. It didn't speak of the nature of the thing, but--"

Her breath finally hitched, her throat closing. The tears started rolling down the priestess' porcelain face, and Serenity was suddenly just Usagi with white hair, running at Rei and nearly knocking her over with a sobbing hug. They clung to each other tightly in the shadow of the past and the spectre of the near future. 

The skies were not tame.

* * *

## LAST OCTOBER

###  **A STORY ABOUT GRIEF, LOVE, AND THE APOCALYPSE**

##### 

**starring the inner senshi, the shitennou, and their royal saints of suffering**

#####  _with appearances by the outer senshi and small lady_

* * *

#### written by [smokingbomber](http://smokingbomber.tumblr.com)

#### illustrations by [i1976blunotte](http://i1976blunotte.tumblr.com)


	2. They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Endymion and Nephrite.

**2\. They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light**

The prince's hands were in his pockets, and his face was expressionless except for the moments wherein the sunlight reflected too-bright off the waters of the city, and at those, he’d let a faint grimace and half-lidded eyes fight the glare. Today the wind was a cool caress, blowing in from the ocean outside the bay, and up this high it was nearly always present.

Far, far below them, the two men could see the canals criss-crossing the city, replacing streets entirely as they grew nearer to the new line between land and water, the liminal space that crept ever closer to Sumida, to Shinjuku. The highrises between which the pedestrian bridges soared all belonged to them, so they were reinforced and built on ground made higher by contractors. They would neither sink nor tumble. 

The slender, gleaming bridges were like spiderwebs beneath them, connecting the buildings in a lattice that repeated every five floors, all the way up to the hundredth. It wasn't, Mamoru reflected, an arcology; this project sat in the detritus of the flooded centuries past and remained accessible to the general public. He looked past the bridges and between the canals to where their other projects stagnated, as too much time lately was spent on putting out fires and convincing people to evacuate _before_ there was another storm--

\--and somewhere to the north, Chiyoda maybe, someone was in despair; somewhere else, a retaining wall broke and spilled stones and brackish water into the first floor and basement of a recently abandoned house; a few kilometers west, there was a screaming argument and an ancient underground tank slowly collapsing and vomiting waste into the dark waters--

"Hey," said Nik, his voice breaking into the windy quiet like an announcement that there was life in the world.

Mamoru started, and his dark blue eyes turned to fix on his friend; behind his expression there was an element of trying to recall how words worked, and he remembered to look curious and expectant after a second.

"Been a while since you've gargoyled on a tall thing. I'm half expecting a justice speech. Find anything to declaim at?" He expected Mamoru to laugh, to relax the stiffness of his shoulders, to recall himself.

Instead, there was only a faint smile and a near-invisible shake of his head, and Mamoru looked through Nik for a second before letting his eyes stray back to the city.

After a silence that Nik percieved as wildly uncomfortable and Mamoru didn't even notice, with the wind ruffling the prince's hair and tangling his guardian's, Mamoru spoke. His words fell flat, sitting in the air on the bridge with them, refusing to be light and refusing to come to life. "I've been having prophetic dreams. They started before we even finished stocking the caves." There was a pause the length of a heartbeat, and then he asked without looking, "What have the stars told you lately? About how much time we have."

Nephrite froze, then shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away from Mamoru, shifting his weight. 

In the silence, the city spoke to her uncrowned king again; there was nothing to distract him from it but his own thoughts, and he'd shelved them to wait for Nephrite's answer. Here a motor's seized; here a roof has fallen in, there a child is crying, and over there, corrosion has finally worn through the underground tunnels' linings and they can't support-- air is rushing out--

"You should enjoy this October," Nik finally said, and the words didn't make sense.

The violent eruption of air upsets the balance of some corroded cables and chains holding something in the canal in place, and they break, and Nik's words percolate through the mess and hit Mamoru squarely.

"I see," said Mamoru, his voice falling away from the conversation, the bridge, even Nik; his tone was neutral.

Desperately, Nik grabbed to catch it, to catch Mamoru's attention again, to bring him back to the bright quiet chilly October day, far above their drowning city. "Maybe you and Usagi should plan Halloween costumes like you used to. I'm going to try and get Mako to be a Disney princess-- aah, what was her name again? From Colonel Anne?"

A second's silence, and Mamoru chewed on his lip. "Anne, presumably," he said into the air, but it was tired.

"Right yes, duh, Anne Farquharson-Mackintosh-- she loves her-- and I'll be her soldier husband under house arrest, and-- and anyway, kinks aside, you and Usagi used to come up with really good ones. Remember the Jim and Pam thing you did in like 2010?"

The Earth's guardian's eyes were closed, and he was breathing in deeply. He still answered, the word a sigh. "No," he said, and curled his hands around the railing, finally, feeling the thrum of the bridge's vibration in the wind, letting it travel up his arms, connect him even more solidly to the ground, and to the ground under the water, and to the life in the water and around it. He listened with a part of his attention, buffering Nik's words in silence and reviewing them whenever there was a pause, whenever Nik was looking for a response.

\--sunlight sparkling off of the broken windows in the half-fallen towers, kudzu creeping up to bring the rest of them down into the sluggish shallows; fish swimming through the disintegrating bars of a crib, caught between a dislocated door and an underwater gutter; red algae blooming in Shingo's old bedroom, making the water the bright color of fresh-spilled blood--

His hands tightened as hard and fast as they would against a high-tension power line, and he swam upward through the girders and crystal and plexiglass and opus caementicium, gasping for breath. He let go and stepped back, looking at Nik with eyes that didn't quite see him yet. He registered that Nik was staring, and as his heart slowed down, he rifled through his mental buffer and found the last question Nik had asked.

_'It's better than dwelling, isn't it?'_

"You okay, Endy?" was what Nik was asking now, leaning forward and stepping closer, reaching to touch Mamoru's arm.

"Yes," Endymion answered, the word jerked out of him, abrupt and shaking. "Yes, it's better than dwelling." 

Nephrite knew he'd failed. But he kept trying. "Not long means you _should_ enjoy this. It's a gift. They're doing their best. Even if you can't let go," he said, fishing for something to say that wasn't just repeating himself, "even if you wouldn't if you could, humor them. Enjoy it. Enjoy something, even for five minutes. Enjoy the breeze-- the scents--" He took a deep breath. "--of, of October. Burning leaves, ozone, sunshine-- street food, ocean spray-- fresh bread, pumpkin flavored crap, excitement-- other people enjoying it--"

"Yes," said Endymion vaguely, eyes turning once more to the sunlight glittering on the endless waters. His dream meant all he could smell was salt flats and rot, unfamiliar vegetation and death, burning plastic and forest fires and sodden caustic dust.

He wouldn't take a deep breath again.

But Nik needed him to be Mamoru. 

"Because enjoyment totally has a scent," he said, shooting Nik a Look over his shoulder.

Nephrite's laugh was the stuff of legend, and in that moment, it echoed off the highrises around them and filled the chilly air.


	3. Time / Human Qualities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Makoto and Jadeite.

**3\. Time / Human Qualities**

The wide bright sky was cloudless and too blue, the same blue as Usagi's eyes and broken antique glass medicine bottles, and the air was a chill thing, still and windless, and full of the noises of the living city around her. Makoto Kino knelt in her rooftop garden in what used to be her old neighborhood, before the sea rose and the rivers abandoned their banks, flooding more with every rainy season until the groundwater was salt and the buildings were condemned. 

Endymion -- no, _Mamoru-niisan,_ she corrected herself angrily as she thought about it-- had shored up her building so she could keep her pretty apartment, the one she'd cared for lovingly for the three hundred years prior to the official death of the neighborhood and the two hundred since then. She didn't want it built up and filled and built over like the park, she wanted it the way it was. She wanted everything the way it was, not just the outsides of herself and her adopted family. 

She knew she couldn't have it, she knew the future approached steadily. She remembered their Chibiusa, and couldn't imagine how Small Lady would grow up to be her, not with all of them loving her so fiercely and missing her at the same time-- but it wasn't her afternoon with Small Lady, so she'd taken off to see to her garden, she'd said. 

For half an hour, she'd listlessly picked weeds and mixed them into the top of the compost heap at the other end of the roof. Then for twenty minutes, she'd made strawberry lemonade from scratch, and then tugged a ratty sweater over her overalls and one of Nik's old shirts, and then she went back up to the roof with them. Not for the first time, she considered raiding Nik's stash of alcohol and putting some vodka in her drink, but the thought only served to ignite a helpless fury anew--

\--so she took it out on the garden, ruthlessly uprooting the annuals and turning them in and over the soil, mulching the perennials, harvesting the last of the vegetables almost carelessly.

Makoto'd been at that for another half hour by the time a light double-tap of landing feet and the rustle of a silk cape heralded the arrival of a visitor. She didn't look to see which of the boys it was, but her scowl etched itself further into her face as she aggressively started pulling up the perennials by their roots, ignoring the alarm of the spindly naked dirty plant-fingers dangling in the air. 

"Hey, hey," came Jadeite's voice on the still air, falling like an avalanche on the cold bright day, previously empty of other people. Then his hand risked being severed from its arm as he caught Makoto's with it, killing her momentum before she could fling the living plant into the bay. "Even I know that one comes back every year. I mean, unless it just insulted Usagi-chan, in which case, yeah, deserved."

Mako yanked the plant back away from him and glared up at his sunny face. "If you're here to help, you can shut up and go drink strawberry lemonade over there and not touch anything else. Otherwise, go away."

Jay, out of uniform now and wearing what passed for normal on the streets and canals of their half-drowned, half-dreaming city, crouched next to Makoto and shook his head, one hand on the rooftop and the other arm draped across a knee. "I came to see if you wanted to go get vegan takoyaki and make up stories about passing pedestrians. The boats are really gorgeous on the bay today, and the new pier's got a carnival going. We can even get candyfloss if you like."

"Candyfloss," repeated Mako in disbelief. "The second it gets wet it's gone, and you think it's a good idea right now."

"It's _supposed_ to be gone once it's in your mouth, Mako-chan. It's designed that way. It's okay."

All at once, Makoto stood up, a tower of rage, and loomed over her crouching friend. Raw electricity sparked from her hands and charred the uprooted plant, and the lightning falling from her eyes looked frighteningly similar to tears, tracking down her face as her eyes welled up. "There's not going to _be_ a next year, Jay! Not for these! This is the last! This isn't going to happen ever again! Sander told me-- they told me--"

Jay stood up, cautious but unafraid, and let Makoto react -- finish reacting -- however she needed to. He didn't say a word, he let the wind that had picked up ruffle his hair. The scent of ozone, and from somewhere far off, that of burning leaves, trailed through it in wisps of threat and memory; the court's most dedicated protector stood tall, railing against fate, and didn't see Jay standing small in its place.

She strode forward and picked him up by his collar, not quite off his feet but close, and hissed in his face, "Sander told me the satellites were failing. That this really is the last. That they were out of parts and power and couldn't fix them anymore, and that he'd set them up from Ami's scenarios to give us one last real autumn, one last October." 

With her in his face, the electricity made his skin crawl and his hair even fluffier than normal, and his heart beat fast. "It's a gift. He gave us a gift," he whispered, voice gentle and apologetic and encouraging, busy hands for once completely motionless at his sides. "It's precious, and we should cherish it, shouldn't we? We should make as many memories as we can--"

_"I DON'T WANT MEMORIES! I WANT IT ALL TO STAY!!"_ yelled Makoto up at him, shaking Jay once, then letting go one fist and hauling it back.

He didn't flinch, he only closed his eyes and waited.

He didn't expect her to actually hit him, and she didn't, but he also didn't expect her to grip him in a hug which, Nik-style, could easily break his ribs if she wasn't careful, which she did. And she buried her face in his shoulder, and she tried to be quiet, but that just made it worse. He flung his arms around her and held her close, pressing his face against her hair -- she still smelled of roses and earth, like Endy did, but she was also still Mako-chan, smelling of her strawberry lemonade, and of apple pies and thunderstorms and girl.

Her muffled, stifled sobs cut him, hurting worse than blows might have, and he reached up and stroked her hair, and his throat was tight and his own eyes were pricking hot and stinging, and he shut them again and pressed his face harder against the side of her head. "I know," he murmured helplessly, "I know."

"It's not fair," she said into his shoulder, the words coming out broken and stumbling, and her breath hitched between them. "It's not fair. We've saved this planet so many times, why can't we save it now? Why can't we protect this planet from itself? From-- from ourselves? We have so much power-- I don't want to start all over again-- I don't like it new, I like old--"

There wasn't any answer Jay could give her, and he held out as long as he could, and then prayed she would think that the subtle little jerk of his own shoulders, his own chest, was only her own motion rocking through him-- but after a moment, after trailing off, she noticed. He tried to say something to stave it off, but his voice actually cracked like a teenager's when he tried to say it again: "I know--"

And that was when Makoto realized she'd recklessly broken Jadeite's sunshine. She pulled back with a look of horrified apology, and tried saying something, but her nose dripped and she blushed scarlet and wiped her whole face on Nik's shirt's sleeve and coughed. Then she saw the wet imprint of her face on Jay's shoulder and her look was so appalled that Jay's red-rimmed eyes flew open wide and he whipped his hand up to cover his mouth.

He couldn't stifle the snort in time, which made Makoto let out a startled giggle, and then they simultaneously sniffled obnoxiously wetly, which set them both off in a fit of half-stifled laughter which nearly got out of control-- but then Jay's eyes lit on the abandoned perennial, and the ripped up garden beds, and the pile of annuals gone to seed on top of the compost, and his gut clenched and his expression softened.

"Let's fix it," he offered quietly, the wind cooling their hot faces and starting to dry the hair stuck to the backs of their necks.

"What?" asked Makoto, breathing hard and scrubbing at her eyes, then following Jay's gaze. Her own expression froze, and unbidden, her eyes stung again and spilled over. "What's the point in fixing it?" she finally choked out.

"What's the point in fixing any of us when everyone dies someday?" asked Jay, reaching out take and squeeze Mako's hand. "Besides. When Nik comes over he'll see it and think _he_ has to fix it, and you know he has a black thumb, and then he'll get super depressed and nobody'll be able to do a thing with him--"

Makoto hiccuped, thinking about it, and then looked affectionately and resignedly amused for a half second. She let both hands fall, squeezing Jay's once beforehand in wordless thanks, and nodded. "Okay," she said.

Doing this, she thought, wasn't a denial or an escape. It was a promise, when they couldn't do anything else, that someday life would pick up again, that someday things might be okay again, and rebuilding wouldn't be so hard. 

As if reading her thoughts, Jay said as he rubbed his eyes on his sleeve and went to pick up the spare pair of garden gloves, "Mako Appleseed."

 

|   
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	4. Cracks / Remember Me as a Time of Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Venus and Kunzite.

**4\. Cracks / Remember Me as a Time of Day**

The moon was low and full, swollen on the horizon; it would fade gradually from orange to yellow as it climbed the evening sky in its desperate search through the stars. The two guardians weren't anywhere she could see them, closed inside, away from moon and stars.

They were still on the earth, though. Drinking in a cloud city when there was business to discuss just wasn't a _thing_ , despite the convenience of their disconnection making them harder for Mamoru to track, Minako had insisted. It would be good enough, she'd said firmly, that Mamoru was with Usagi and Small Lady tonight, thoroughly distracted by a child's bedtime rituals and his and his wife's desperate comforting of each other. As thoroughly as he could be lately, anyway. Maybe even distracted from what he'd finally confessed to Usagi-chan was the planet's constantly building internal screaming underlining prophetic apocalypse dreams. Usa was good at dragging that kind of thing out of him. So was Kunzite.

Minako zipped her jacket shut over her mesh shirt and slouched in her seat, eyeing the crunk degenerates playing some sex VR game nearby, seated in what would be-- if they shut their HUDs off and physically touched each other-- a literal circlejerk. She blew her bangs out of her face and reached to pick up her beer, then let her gaze slide back over to her ostensible drinking partner and his white hair and hopelessly square cucumber-mint-ginger water. 

"She's trying to hide it, mostly," she told Kal, tone light. "Rei got her to cry, though. I never thought the day would come that we had to _try_ to get her to let her emotions out." She took a swig of the beer and made a face. It was warm and it wasn't good enough to be.

"If she can manage to keep them in check when it hits, the practice might be worth the worry she's causing you," Kunzite said, hands on his knees. He was sitting far enough away from the rickety table that it could be used as a weapon if necessary, and wouldn't encumber him if he had to move quickly either way. "Progress on the lunar gates?"

Minako looked irritated, but blinked it away and looked at the wall behind Kal instead of at him. It was actually a fairly interesting wall. A beetle was crawling up the crack through the plaster that looked like a rictus, and the grimy stickers and signatures and threats and beat poetry and obscenities scrawled on the surface made for decent reading in a pinch. "Slower than they would be if Ami were helping, but Luna and Artemis have it pretty much in hand-- or paw-- and we all do what they need us to either way. They should be ready for mass evac in a few days. What about your caves?"

"Well-maintained. They're ready," Kunzite told her calmly. "There's still no way to open the real-world old gates to Elysion; we can only get people there by teleport, but the caves are metaphysically annexed and will hold, all told, about six hundred million. Not nearly enough, obviously, but enough to supplement the Moon's far larger capacity. In theory, together we should be able to evacuate-- with enough warning and the cooperation of the populace-- roughly five-sixths. Worst case, we evacuate at least enough people to repopulate after the disaster."

Enough people to repopulate. That wouldn't be enough to satisfy the rest of the court or the prince and princess. Even five sixths wouldn't be enough for people who thought they could save everyone every time. Minako's mouth twisted down. "Dumb priest," she said, and finished her beer.

She knew it wasn't fair to blame Helios-- it had been the old Queen Serenity's seals on top of Endymion's closing the doors under the hills that cut them off so thoroughly-- but Helios wasn't there to have his feelings hurt, and Endymion wasn't there to defend him.

In response, Kal shone through Kunzite's stone face long enough to give Minako his patented 'don't be such a child' look, and she settled down, smugly satisfied with the minor victory. Getting him to resort to an actual expression was enough to help keep her distracted from the rawness of their upcoming loss, to help keep her focus on depersonalized practicality.

So was internally complaining about his clothes. He wasn't even dressed for where they were; he looked way too _normal_ \-- normal in his head, anyway, but hideously old-fashioned and uptight and clean in his white oxford shirt and jeans, his work boots. He stuck out like a sore thumb in literally any public space these days. At least the rest of them were usually willing to follow conventional modern fashion.

Naturally, he had the gall to interrupt her smugness and deliciously judgemental thoughts. He was watching her closely, expression all Grimface McRockypants again. "Endymion's not doing well."

Minako sighed and reached up to rub her face. "Of course he's not. And he's probably why Usagi-chan is trying to keep everything bottled up: keeping her distress away from him. You know, when it hits? You're probably gonna have to hit him over the head or drug him or something. Otherwise everyone's going to be a shitshow."

Kunzite was quiet. Minako had half been expecting a protest, a retort, but there wasn't a single sound from him -- so she peeked up through her bangs, and he wasn't looking at her anymore. His gaze was fixed on the scarred tabletop, and he was completely motionless, and his lips were pressed so tightly together they were nearly colorless in his dark, strong face. 

Minako leaned forward, then, and reached across the table to lay her tanned, delicate fingers on the table in his line of sight. "She won't be watching by now. Let's go upstairs," she said softly.

\--

It hadn't taken any convincing, which was also a surprise to the first of the Guardian Senshi. She'd said 'upstairs' and he'd mechanically gotten up, finished his cucumber water, left a tip on the table, and walked out the door. The glimpse of his ghost-white cape vanishing around the corner of the doorframe told her he'd be waiting for her; sometimes his courtesy annoyed her, but sometimes-- like now-- it was a comfort.

When they'd gotten to the roof, away from the music and the people and the virtual circlejerk and the grime, he'd let his shadow bubble dissolve around them, setting them both lightly on the cracked and uneven white plastic tile roof. Now he was just standing at the edge behind the low wall, looking at the reflection of the moon on the water, hands loose at his sides and cape and hair moving slightly in the breeze.

"I brought sake," Minako said into the flat, sound-eating salt air.

Kunzite glanced over his shoulder at her, half-turning. His grey eyes looked nearly silver, nearly alien, in the light; the moon was a bright white and the sky was dark, and Kunzite cut a stark figure against the backdrop. Minako's breath caught for a second, and then she stepped forward, because the look on his face, behind those silvery eyes, was making her heart hurt and she wasn't ready for that yet. 

Pulling an ancient bottle out -- the label read Bishounen Ginzukuri and Minako looked sly and Kal, again, looked pained -- she told him, "I've been saving it for a rainy day. You need to step back while you still can, Kal. He's occupied tonight and Rei said we had at least a week."

There was a long pause, and finally, Kal gave her an affectionate look, shoulders relaxing slightly, but that was the only way in which he was going to meet her halfway tonight. "It's not raining," he said regretfully.

No, not the only way -- he held out a hand. Not for the bottle of sake that was only a little younger than the two of them, but for Minako herself.

Letting out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, Minako folded the bottle of sake back into her subspace pocket and took the last step necessary to lace her small fingers through his, and stop abreast of him at the edge of the roof. In his eyes was a mixture of pain and grief, dread and apology, and she could read them as clearly as the label on the bottle, despite his customary conceal-don't-feel face.

Half-turning, she reached up with her other hand to lay her fingertips lightly against his lips, and then she drew them across his mouth, delicate touch attempting to erase the lines around the corners that meant he'd forgotten how to smile again. She looked so intent doing it that it actually worked; those lines relaxed and the ones at the corners of his eyes emerged.

Then Venus looked up at those silver-grey eyes and was silent for a second, reading them. Finally, "We really should take a day, even if you don't relax your guard. We should take a day and a night and burn this into our memories. It'll be important later. And it'll be an important thing," she said more quietly and more firmly, "for you to be able to give him later, too. Because--"

"--he can't enjoy it, no," agreed Kal, expelling a breath afterwards, like he was releasing ghosts pent up inside him. His voice didn't shake, but it was a near thing. "But Jay-- Nik--"

Venus shook her head. "They always try to make the best of things. So-- it'll mean more coming from you. You have to view it honestly. You always appreciate beauty--" she flipped her hair and sparkled at him for a second's worth of self-aggrandizing self-deprecation "--so appreciate the beauty that Ami and Sander stole for us, and give it to Mamoru when he needs it."

"Tonight, then," Kunzite finally acquiesced, and dropped his henshin into the air, "and tomorrow."

Minako let go of his hand and stepped in front of him, back to him, and she leaned against his broad chest. Kal put his arms around her waist and leaned down to press his lips to the top of her golden hair, and they silently watched the calm waters.

 

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	5. Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Mercury and Zoisite. (Also, as I am posting this, there's a tornado watch in my county? and i'm... 35 miles inland from the hudson river... ??? i feel kind of achievement unlocked or maybe kind of terrified

**5\. Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean**

The energy fuelling the lab was both geothermal and seismic, harnessing vents at points all around the Ring of Fire and tapping the tectonic tension of the subduction zone of the Okhotsk and Pacific plates. Ami had worked on it for years with Sander, Mamoru, and Michiru, her dream to eventually create a system that would both relieve Japan of the earthquakes and tsunamis and provide sustainable energy to power the island -- and eventually to the rest of the world, should they prove its worth.

"It was a nice dream," she murmured to herself, hands falling from her keyboard. "Maybe we can get back to it someday."

Sander glanced up at Ami, pushing her strawberry blonde hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ears, then removing her other hand from the holographic model of the weather satellite she was working on. "Which?" she asked her blue-haired sometimes-girlfriend, tired, but interested.

Ami fluttered her hands and laughed self-deprecatingly. "The power. From the trenches."

Sander's green eyes slid away from her, back to the holographic model.

"Oh I know," Ami said hurriedly, "and I'm not sorry. They needed this. And keeping it going as long as we can is important. Maybe we can even fix it all so it can stay. I'm almost finished with the--"

"We all needed it," said Sander, not looking at her. "But you won't go up there and taste it."

Ami looked startled-- not surprised at the argument, but at the fact that Sander was calling her out on it. "You know I can't," she blurted gracelessly, then returned her attention to the numbers in her head's-up display and let her hands begin typing again, almost of their own accord. "If I stop, so will October. I have to fix it. We have to fix them. We _can_ get them all back up to par, we just need to-- we need Nik and Secchan to go up there and replace the parts, that's all. And they'll work. You designed them, they'll work."

Sander was silent, and drew her arms in close to her chest, leaning forward a little, knees up with her heels on the rung of the lab chair. She still wouldn't look at Ami.

After a moment, Ami realized Sander hadn't replied and hadn't gone back to working, and her hands stilled and she surveyed her lab partner critically. "If you need a break--" she began, an edge in her voice, not quite sharp but approaching it.

"You won't take one. And no matter how good the parts I designed, no matter how shining your calculations, no matter if they're installed-- we won't get all the satellites working again, and we don't have time to install new ones because we're too _busy_ patching together what's left of the old ones, we weren't _fast_ enough, we didn't _acquire_ enough, we don't _rule_ anything, we're working with a framework that's five hundred years old and there's space junk crashing into the working parts all the time and we're _not going to make it work_ , we're _trying_ \--" 

Here, Sander stood abruptly, wavering and inconsistently weighted voice rising to desperately pleading heights, "--to fucking empty the ocean with SPOONS. We're _not going to make it_!"

The statement, ringing with a finality so sharp and heavy that Ami could feel it pierce her, echoed in the vast laboratory. Sander's hitching breath chased it, filling the filtered and recycled air with a level of emotion Ami's anxiety couldn't handle.

Sailor Mercury stood up gracefully, fingertips resting on the countertop, and her ice blue eyes met emerald green. "I see. If that's how you feel," she began.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Sander screamed as she swarmed forward, vaulting the table and landing well within Mercury's personal space. The Senshi of Wisdom and Water flinched even before she found her biceps grabbed in a viselike hold, and a face right up in her own. "Don't you DARE pull that shit on me now! You're killing yourself trying to fix all the things and they can't be fixed, Ami! They can be held together with duct tape and crystals for like _five more minutes_ , and they're going to fall apart, and we need to be preparing for _that_!"

Mercury broke the grip with a quick lift and twist of her arms and a swift chop downwards, and stepped back, unable to keep the betrayal off her sweet, doll-like face; in slow motion, it transformed from hurt to fury, and she swept an arm up and out, bringing up a literal ice wall between them as she backpedaled. "STOP IT!" she shrieked. "GO AWAY! If you can't handle the pressure then get the fuck off the ocean floor! Just because you THINK it can't all be fixed doesn't mean it's TRUE! We make miracles, _Zoisite!_ I'm going to do it and if I have to do it without your help then SO BE IT!"

Sander opened her mouth, twisted like she'd just tasted something horribly bitter, and started to say something, but Mercury wasn't done.

Her arms were at her sides and she was crying, but unlike the hot tears that tracked down Sander's face unheeded, hers froze on her skin; a rime of frost covered everything in the vicinity except for the patch of floor where Sander was standing. "In fact, I don't even WANT your help! You think it'll help prepare the world for the apocalypse you believe is around the corner-- because you DON'T believe in ME-- if I go up there and swan about in the sunshine and rake leaves? You think that'll help anything at all? It'll just make me feel like-- like I'm neglecting my duty, like I'm going to just LET this world end--" 

A fire-hot breath chuffed out of Sander's mouth, abortive and incredulous, visible in the frigid air. She reached out to put a hand on the ice wall and it melted under her touch, liquifying and transforming into an eerie, green-gold-lit steam in the same moment. As soon as the mist drifted far enough from her, it fell softly to the floor as snow, the crystals forming instantly. But there was a window between them now, and they could see each other's faces, mirrored in their frustration and hurt.

Mercury could see the myriad paths Zoisite could take to convince her, see them as if they spread through the laboratory and out into the warren of hallways and beyond, into the dark and vasty salt depths surrounding them-- so the wall of ice she erected to replace the one Sander had melted was in her heart.

"Leave," she said flatly.

Silence reigned. Even the hum of the power throughout the station was a muffled thing, holding its breath.

Sander turned without a word and stalked across the floor to the door, yanked it open, and slammed it so hard behind her that it didn't even latch -- it just bounced open again.

Mercury's back was to Sander as she left, but when the door slammed, she reflexively turned to look--

\--and Ami saw sakura petals drifting to the floor like the snow a moment ago.

She couldn't breathe. Her hand was clenched tight in a fist over her heart and she couldn't breathe; she made a choked little sound and sank to her knees on the frozen floor, staring at the petals as they vanished like the ghosts they were, sparkling soft and immaterial, then nothing.

The silence was a lingering accusation.

She crawled under her desk and cried until she slept, mind and body finally too worn down to do anything else.

 

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	6. Part 2: The End (Disintegration Anxiety)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part Two begins with the end of the world and ends with the long dawn shadow of a beginning.
> 
> Chapter cast: Mamoru, Ami, Zoisite, Kunzite, Jadeite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW:** Seizure, sedation, mild dissociation; drug and alcohol mention.

## Part 2

### The week of Sunday, October 9th, 2499

**1\. Disintegration Anxiety**

Mamoru had found Sander passed out drunk on Nik's couch, face sticky and stiff with dried salt tears he hadn't bothered to wash away. It took a lot to send Sander in the direction of Nik's stash instead of just sending themself insensible with pot; alcohol, to the prettiest of the Shitennou, was self-castigation as much as it was an escape. The fact that they were a guy when they passed out pointed at a potential direction from which the hot mess had originated, and as awful as it was, Mamoru was relieved to have someone else's personal problem to butt into.

It took his mind off the ground screaming at him from a hundred floors down. It gave him two very specific people to focus his awareness on. It gave him blessed, blessed tunnel vision.

He'd need it to go down to Ami's laboratory, as close as it was to the loudest and most urgent stressors.

\--

As long as he'd been doing this, the prince still hated teleporting. Between dimensions, no matter how short it was, and no matter how much of a relief it should be right now, he was cut off from his planet and felt like most of his body was missing and his senses were turned off. It was uncomfortable, but at least he'd managed to condition himself out of the vertigo it used to give him -- he no longer threw up on arrival at his destination.

Still, he took a second to reorient himself once his feet were on the deck plates of the underwater installation, and then his light footsteps tap-tapped on the metal floor, echoing in the vast silence. He knew the way; he wasn't often here, but he'd helped to design and build the place-- up to and including insisting that the pressure under the dome was magically enhanced to prevent the bends on exit and internal implosions on entrance.

Ami's querulous voice came small from out of the darkness. "...Sander?"

"Just me," Mamoru answered as he approached the one well-lit corner in the immense main room. His voice was gentle, but it had the same tone to it that he used on Small Lady when she'd calmed down from a tantrum and needed to have the reason sorted out.

There was a hiccup of a wretched laugh, and Ami stood up from her desk, turning to face Mamoru like he was her doom, at the door, lifting the latch. Her hands trembled, so she clasped them behind her-- but then he got close enough to the light for her to make out his tired features, his body language... he was carrying as much weight as she was, if not more, and he'd come down here with that tone of voice and that concern etched into the lines of his face.

She broke a little bit, right then and there; her face crumpled and she turned away from him, hugging her arms to herself. "Sander was right," she said, voice thick and full of regret and self-hatred. "I'm so sorry, Prince. Sander was right. We have-- we have less than a week, and I sent her away because she was trying to tell me so and I didn't want to hear it--"

"Ami," Mamoru said with all the quiet and calm in his voice that Elysion held even when the 'real' world was riots and hopelessness, and he reached to lightly put a hand to one side of her elbow. "It's all right. Come up. Zoi's-- they're out cold right now, at Neph's place, but you need the rest and they'll be happy to see you in the sunshine when they wake. I'll take a watch down here."

Ami let herself fall into Mamoru's chest and curl up against it, and he wrapped his arms around her, and she cried silently. She didn't have to use words; he brushed her hair away from her temples, and he understood, and she could feel the part of the Earth that would endure just at his touch.

That was when she felt a splintering, shattering pain at the base of her skull and blooming between her eyes, and she had just enough time to realize _it wasn't hers_ before the floor shifted beneath her feet and Mamoru--

\--she caught him as he fell like a rock, clutching at his head and making an almost inhuman, keening sound of distress that wouldn't stop--

Everything was happening too fast. "Mercury Star--" Ami choked out, fumbling for the transformation pen she no longer carried, hadn't needed in hundreds of years; she hung on to the seizing prince as she lowered him to the floor, which had begun to buck amid the sounds of shrieking metal and, distantly, water. She shook her head violently and slammed her fist onto her communicator, then screamed out as her hand flung itself out automatically to encase them in an immense ice bubble, "HELP! LAB! MAMORU IS--"

"--not the one throwing an ice wall in my face again," came a high, tight voice, fighting a migraine from combined hangover and psychic backlash from the prince on the floor. Incongruously, sakura petals drifted to the floor of the ice bubble.

Mercury's panicked face shot up to see Zoisite in uniform, and Kunzite stepping out of the air next to him a heartbeat later. She was all too willing to let him pick Mamoru up, and to listen when he told her, voice short, "Sphere. And then a sedative. And then we'll teleport."

"I don't-- my supplies are--"

Kunzite interrupted her, cradling Mamoru to his chest tightly, "Sphere." He glanced aside. "Zoisite?"

"Hy-- Hyperspatial Sphere Generate--" Mercury got out, and as the spherical blue grid of light expanded out from her to encase them inside a tiny pocket dimension inside the ice bubble, she watched uncomprehendingly as Sander slid a crystal hypo from his sleeve and pressed it to the side of Mamoru's neck.

The prince instantly relaxed--

\--and Ami heard the crash outside the sphere and through the thickness of the ice capsule, and turned to look.

She watched mutely as the hot water from the steam vents at the trench's floor melted her ice away like it was candyfloss, and thought she could see her desk whipping past in a dizzying eddy of powerful currents. All the air was already gone. That, she thought, was fast. And _that_ , she knew, was the pretty wrap from the bento Makoto had sent down for her with Sander the other day, drifting in the wake of a crushed piece of machinery--

\--and then everything was cherry blossoms and the rosy aureate color of dawn, and a second later she was on her hands and knees, sobbing, Zoisite holding her and shielding her from view with their cape. Outside the cape, the screaming hadn't started yet. Kunzite was saying something and she couldn't hear or understand him, but she felt Sander nod, and then she heard Sander's voice in her ear, quiet and careful and as gentle as Mamoru had been only moments earlier. Five minutes? Three?

"We can deal with it later. Right now, you have to pull yourself together. There are shelters we made, and Minako said something about Serenity having set something up to get people to the Moon, but I don't know how that works. I can help you, but you have to tell me what to do--"

She focused on that; she hyperfocused, because the screaming hadn't started yet, and that was important, because they could still save people.

"The command center--" she said, getting her breathing under control. "It's-- that's where the main controls are. There are gates. Is Jay--"

"Yes. He's actually already there; he hijacked the emergency broadcast system. He needs to know--"

Sakura petals, and Zoisite finished his sentence as he helped her up from the beautiful floor of their old command center, no longer beneath the Crown but otherwise the same. "--where to tell people to go."

And there was Jadeite, standing at the controls, and giving them a forced wide grin over his shoulder. "Oh I always know where to tell people to go. But I think I should be more specific this time, right?"

Relief flooded through the Senshi of Water (who did not at all feel wise) because at least there was something she _could_ fix. She scrambled over to join Jadeite, Zoisite following after her, and brought up the maps.

"That's great," said Jadeite with real enthusiasm, and grabbed the mic.

> _It starts with an earthquake. It's in just the right place and at just the correct magnitude and frequency to cause a critical failure in Mercury's seabed laboratory and control systems. The power grids begin to fail first, and the laboratory itself, a meshing of technology and magic that's suddenly lost half of its power, implodes spectacularly. With its loss, there is no check on the carefully suppressed and channeled tension between the tectonic plates in the Pacific Rim. Many more earthquakes follow._


	7. Dream Is Collapsing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Jadeite, Mercury, Usagi; Nephrite, Jupiter, Mars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW:** Search and rescue in rubble. Implied body horror.

**2\. Dream is Collapsing**

It'd been less than five minutes before everything began, and Kunzite and Zoisite had already left, planning to meet Venus at their immediate destination. Jadeite finished the first round of announcements over all bands right before the last of the conventional power cut out, and put the mic down to start flipping switches over to broadcast via magic. "Hey," he said distractedly, "do you think Kal could absorb some of the energy output of that shit going on at the faults?"

"Without Mamoru increasing his capacity and giving him a means of channelling it away, no. Not enough to make a difference. Even then, it'd be a toss-up," answered Mercury, tone short and abrupt; she was busy rerouting what magical resources she could.

That's when Usagi billowed in like a hurricane of tears, silk tulle, and angry terror, clearly not in a very queenly state of mind despite the henshin she wore. "What-- where _IS_ he--?!" she cried out, face just shy of panic and a bubbling-up of anger all at once, arms in the air and gown a weightless cloud around her, crown perched at the front of her silver-white hair and wings holding her aloft; the question was utterly unnecessary, as she beelined for the unconscious Endymion on the couch behind the control panels. She gathered him in protectively, and turned red-rimmed eyes spilling silver tears toward Ami and Jay, bewildered and edging toward accusatory, as if they had something to do with his state.

"Usa--" Ami started, staring, and then the comms beeped and the cavern shook violently.

\--

Nephrite was braced against a sinking retaining wall, eyes wild as Jupiter hurled rocks away from the one out of thousands of buildings that had shaken apart with that first wretchedly powerful upheaval of earth and stone and water, holding it up while Mars floated above, a ball of fire in each hand, staring intently into them and calling out the locations of the still living and trapped as the fire gave her information. He brought his wrist communicator up to his mouth and bit the channel open; his other arm was occupied. "What happened to Endy!" he bellowed. "I know he broke when the faults did, but then fucking _radio silence_ from his _brain?!_ "

It was Mercury who answered, Usagi hyperventilating and starting to go utterly to pieces in the background, incoherent with a wildly vascillating mixture of anxiety, grief, fury, and a complete and total loss of nerve. <<He's in the command center with us. Kunzite and Zoisite sedated him as soon as they got to the lab; he had something like a grand mal seizure the second before the earthquake started-->>

"Okay," Nephrite interrupted her, less wild but more tense. "Can you get him awake? We need him and Usagi out here bad. Mako and Rei and I are on rescue, and we need someone to get people out of the upstairs cities before they hit the water--"

"FOUND HER!" Jupiter yelled, and Neph had to look away from her face and what, exactly, she'd found around the little girl she'd been digging out. He could hear the evac paramedics on their way. All of this was taking too long.

Finally, Usagi started quieting behind Mercury; she started listening, anxiety hiking up again. <<Can't. It's ongoing. He'll seize again and flood all of you with everything at once if I let him wake up. I'm trying to synthesize a psychic dampener in my copious spare time, but it's going to be a bit and I can't guarantee it'll leave him with everything he needs.>>

Neph focused on her words. "...okay," he said finally, and then stepped away from the wall, letting it collapse into the rest of the ruined house, splashing and crunching.

<<What was that! Are you okay?!>>

Now Usagi was silent behind Ami, practically holding her breath.

"Fine. The cloud cities?"

<<Kal, Sander, and Minako are on it. I'll trade you Jadeite for Rei, he can help with the water. I need her to help Usagi with Mamoru for hopefully less than ten minutes, we'll try to get him awake.>>

Nephrite was silent for a second, weighing how many people they wouldn't be able to save without Rei against how many people they might be able to save with the Prince and Princess. No-- the King and Queen. Makoto took a second to come over and put a trembling hand on his arm.

"...fine," he said to Mercury, and cut off the comm.

\--

When Neph's signal cut out, Ami turned to Serenity, who'd quieted been listening to Nephrite's voice and the sounds around him, and who was now white as a sheet and quite silent. "Usagi-chan," she started, taking a breath.

Usagi sniffed, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her wrist, looking back at Ami with Mamoru still cradled partly against her chest..

Mercury glanced at Jay and jerked her head toward the door, and he nodded and just teleported instead.

"Did you hear what I told Nephrite about Mamoru, or were you still too mad to listen?"

Usagi's lower lip wobbled, chin crumpling, but her tears had stopped. "I heard," she said, her breath hitching in the middle; the floor shook again, and the reinforcements held. She curled a little further around Mamoru.

Mercury nodded. "Good. Now listen to the reasoning here: it's a very, very good thing they'd prepped that as a contingency and literally carried it around with them. Mamoru was in enough pain and anguish that it would have done him permanent damage if they hadn't put him under."

"I could have helped him! They could have taken me with them; I could have helped him filter it out-- kept him steady--" Serenity protested, voice rising again, then breaking into a small and fragile thing that was _trying,_ trying to be brave and determined; her one hand left Mamoru again to press against her chest in a tight little fist, white knuckled and shaking. "And I need him! We all do, but I need him to be able to--"

"First," Mercury interrupted gently, turning back to the controls and continuing to reroute with one hand, and with the other, going back to synthesizing attempt number one of probably at least twenty-five variations on the formula she'd found in Eternity Main's database. "First, there was absolutely no time to get you. The lab was collapsing around us and Kunzite and Zoisite couldn't teleport us out with the interference from Mamoru's psychic distress-- from _that close_ \-- practically destroying their concentration. Second, it was bad enough he probably would have brought you down with him, at least right then."

The shallow, quick breathing behind her was enough of a tell for Mercury that she'd gotten through to Usagi, and her stomach contracted in dread, because she knew what was coming next and she didn't have the wherewithal to deal with her queen's oncoming conflicted panic, not when she was barely hanging on herself. She hoped Rei would arrive soon. Rei could always be sharp with Usagi.

Nevertheless, she tried to cut it off at the pass, give Usa something constructive to do. "Why don't you focus on finding him in there and giving him some kind of stability until Rei gets here? They really, really do need you, even without Mamoru."

There was a hollow, echoing boom from somewhere very distant, and all of a sudden half the board lit up red. 

Serenity's voice was very very small, eyes suddenly wide and staring at the board for a second. "No-- they need us both." She looked back down at her husband. "And-- I'll hurry."

> _The weather satellites, having lost their direction and their power source all at once, catastrophically failed. The first mass casualties out of the immediate range of earthquake and tsunami were when a floating city fell into the sea because a hurricane of snow and a loss of power very abruptly made too heavy for its self-contained emergency power grid; 1/50th of the un-evacuated population survived the initial fall, and of those only about three hundred didn't drown or freeze to death-- the Shitennou could only teleport out a few at a time and the Senshi could only pick up a few groups in the middle of Sailor Teleport, and there was only so much flotsam people could cling to._

 

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	8. Mombasa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Kunzite, Zoisite, Venus

**3\. Mombasa**

He couldn't see Minako or Sander, and he couldn't hear them over the comms, but he knew intellectually that it was most likely because he couldn't hear a bloody thing over the storm. He also knew that Endymion was safe, and the only way at this point to _keep_ him safe, and sane, would be to do everything he possibly could to mitigate the destruction and loss of life.

Eyes and ears and words and hands. The Eye of the King, but more than that-- always so much more than that, and fallen, and forgiven, and reinstated, and the one thing he never wanted to do was let his prince down again. His King. It wasn't his job to believe in the impossible, only to carry out his part--

\--and he stole the very lightning from the sky, where it sought to topple one of the towers over the crowds of people waiting to cram through the lunar gate to the safety of the clean, bright, and predominantly empty-- but swiftly filling-- restored Moon Kingdom.

At least the buzzing in his ears, in his veins, drowned out the screaming of those his shields couldn't hold, the screaming of those that Venus couldn't get through the gate before the water came to join the snow and hail, the abrupt cessation of that screaming when the last of the lofty cloud city plunged into the icy waters. The buzzing in his mind distracted him from the thought of the other five floating cities, lashed by storm and heavied with snow, the power systems keeping them aloft failing by meters and then kilometers--

Bright hair in the sky: evidence thst one of them was safe. Venus signed to him, glowing as golden as his King, that she had an idea; signed that he should follow her.

As the city sank beneath the waves, air boiling up from breaking buildings like a cauldron in the sea, Kunzite followed a ray of sunshine through the blizzard and was swiftly joined by a blaze of cleansing fire at his side. Zoisite took his hand as they flew, and he squeezed it, and then let go a moment later: their destination was in sight.

Two hundred objects, give or take, acting as lifeboats. Some actually were. Most were other things. They all had people in or on them, and the people were all freezing cold, drenched through and already beginning to suffer from hypothermia. Kunzite estimated their life expectancy at something less than half an hour, exposed in this storm on the ocean-- but he could also see Minako's plan already: it glowed, too. 

Her belt-- her Love-Me Chain-- was strung between all the boats and flotsam, lengthened magically, as long as it needed to be to keep it all together. It was a shining web of light in the dark and cold, and something ached at the back of his heart, remembering the echo of Endymion's energy and buried soul-deep love even in the Dark Kingdom; he pushed it away as irrelevant to the here and now. Kunzite couldn't hear, and he could barely see Venus' signing because the visibility was roughly two meters, but he could see his part in the plan all the same; Sander nodded, then looked expectant, trying not to grin in relief and gratitude just yet. The plan was still unproven.

Still holding the power of the lightning he'd eaten, Kunzite brought up his shadow shields, absorbing heat and kinetic energy and light from outside the bubble-- the bubble that he carefully expanded to contain all the boats before turning up the absorption. Beside him, Sander lifted his hands and spun out a thread of fire to ring the perimeter on the inside and grow large enough to combat the frigid air and still-worse water, chilling the rescuees to the bone. Suddenly the inside of the dark bubble had warm dancing light, and the ambient temperature grew enough to make it easier to breathe, and a round of ragged cheers cut through the crying and confusion, through the short breath and the chattering of teeth.

Venus announced-- now that there was the ability to _see_ , to _hear_ , "I'm going to tow us to where you can get teleported to safety." Then she added in a cheerful singsong, "Nobody fall in!"

The cheers grew louder, and then someone started singing, and a few more voices joined in, and then a few more. It was an old song Kunzite thought sounded familiar, but he couldn't spare the attention to identify it until Zoisite joined in, voice thick with emotion: La Vie en Rose.

As Venus turned, calling up a map on her communicator and pulling her belt behind her, Kunzite was the only one who saw the empty look settle on her face.


	9. Kerala / Doomsday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Rei, Mercury, Serenity, Mamoru, metaphor, mental ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW:** Minor assault (a slap); horror-filled mindscape with relatively high octane nightmare fuel in moderate detail.

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, USAGI!"

Rei's voice cut through the thick atmosphere of the command center, and Ami pointedly picked up a pair of headphones and clapped them over her ears, then went back to frantically trying to reroute failed systems and make it so anyone at all could get out of where they were stuck before the next part of the rolling disaster struck. 

She was trying not to think about how much of it was her fault, was her hubris, was her dreams and wishful thinking getting in the way of preparing for this. She should have been preparing for this for the past hundred years. 

She was trying not to think about Sander in the collapsed city, or about Makoto digging bodies out of rubble, or about-- 

\--and then Rei spoke again, harsh and fierce, words assaulting their queen. "You need to go out there _RIGHT NOW!"_ The Senshi of Temper.

"But--" The Senshi of Panic. No, that was unkind, that was--

Ami flinched as she heard Rei's hand impact the side of Usagi's face, even through the headphones.

There was silence. 

Without looking, Mercury said quietly, "Mars? If the two of you can get him functional, current estimates put us at roughly 536 per cent efficiency as compared to our current level. Please try."

Silence again, and then Serenity's voice, much calmer and more businesslike-- and slightly worryingly detached, "Mars, you don't actually understand. I can't do any of what you need without him, or without taking everyone else away from what they're doing. None of this is evil. There's no _villain_ , there's nothing to purify. With Mamo-chan, I can do a lot more for _this_." Then just shy of apologetic, she added in Mercury's direction, "Do you have a formula yet?"

Mercury opened a cubby in the console and pulled out a small and gleaming silver tube, then turned to present it to the two other women. Mars, she saw, was holding her hand to her chest and not looking at Serenity at the moment. "Yes. It won't hurt him, but again, he might not have access to much power at all, depending on how the psychic parts of his powers interact with his connection to the earth and the rest of his power, and how completely it dampens them. So please try without it first. Leave it as a last resort. And move as quickly as you can," she said, letting Mars take the phial. "The world is not on pause while you're in here."

Actually speaking the word 'pause' made Ami stop, and her eyes widened. "Usagi-chan, where is--"

"With Hotaru and Setsuna," Serenity answered absently as she started arranging her multitude of skirts on the couch, before Ami could even finish the question. "And no, Secchan can't stop it. Anyway-- they were over to make candy apples."

Mercury stopped breathing, closed her eyes, and then silently went back to work.

\--

The preparations weren't extensive; Rei had an ofuda on hand in case there was anything else in there with Mamoru, and she had Mercury's phial, unopened, sitting on the beautiful floor next to the couch out of kicking and flailing range. Usagi stayed in her royal henshin for the strength and easy access to the Silver Crystal, and she knelt on the couch with her husband's head pillowed on her kneeling lap, her hands at his temples. Rei knelt on the floor next to them and meditated long enough to clear her psyche of the chaos outside and hone her frustration and anger into a useful tool, a scalpel, a bright lance of purifying flame to cut through the darkness that consumed the Prince-- and then she reached forward and paused mid-motion. She finally met Serenity's eyes, and looked ashamed. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I hit you. I shouldn't have. You had a real reason." And then she delicately laid fingers on Mamoru's wrist and on Serenity's hand.

Her mistake was in assuming it was darkness.

It was overwhelming waves of violent pain, white-hot and burning cold and shared between the people of this world and the Earth itself, lashing out in an uncontrolled and mindless frenzy of agony. She almost flinched away: what stopped her was the knowledge that Usagi would do this alone if she left the Queen to her own devices.

Cool silver light enveloped her a split second later, and in all the chaos, she could see a thread of it stretching forth into the maelstrom, entwined with one of gold that reached desperately outward toward them. "Ah," she breathed, eyes closed and lips still and silent in the outside world. Inside, she took a second to get her bearings, even as she felt-- then saw-- Neo Queen Serenity beside her, face full of compassion and determination and a deep understanding of the pain that surrounded them. Even then, she took a moment to glance to Rei, and lean to kiss her, featherlight, on the cheek. "Sometimes I need it. It's all right."

Then the young-faced and ancient-eyed queen looked ahead again, and drew her shoulders up straight, and back, set.

"Was this what my mother felt at the end of the Silver Millennium?" she asked distractedly, rhetorically, as she started forward and kept the shield around them. Her slender hand was outstretched, long beautiful fingers entangled in the gold thread that met her silver, and she began to wind it around and around her wrist as she walked on the air above the heaving and broken earth, the floods and the death and the lava.

"It could be," hazarded Mars cautiously, concentrating on keeping herself and Serenity tethered to the outside world. Out there, her hand let go of Mamoru's wrist and fished for the phial, then clenched it in her hand with her thumb just under the lid, ready to pop it off. "The Ginzuishou might know, if you asked it. But please don't ask it now, Usagi-chan."

"Of course not," Serenity told her, glancing aside and smiling slightly. "We need to get to my Mamo-chan."

It was while she looked at Rei instead of ahead of her that they ran into an obstacle, an actual obstruction, an actual part of Mamoru's psyche that objected to them coming any closer. They stepped on the air and landed maybe ten centimeters off the splintered and tilted floor-- no, wall-- of an upstairs room, dark and dingy even before it fell sideways and became half submerged in foetid floodwater. The angry sea swirled around the rocks that had smashed the wall in with its impact, and part of the wreckage was red-painted metal, and there were other people standing on the air with them, crowding the space in, overlapping and yelling and gossiping and bleeding and screaming and laughing cruelly and doing paperwork and ignoring everything else, and some of them bled out on the jagged spikes of floor, which looked more like swords than splintered wood, and they wore clothes from so many eras, but the largest concentrations were current, twentieth century, and--

\--and Silver Millennium. The three eras with the most terror, the most despair, that Endymion had ever lived through.

The golden thread had gone slack.

Rei stared around at the room -- if it could even be called that -- in a horror so gripping it was making her stomach hurt. "Where-- what is this?" she asked faintly, and got no answer. She looked to her side in alarm and saw Serenity with her hands -- and the thread coil, trailing down into the splinters and bloody, muddy water, filled with rot and sharp things -- pressed to her ears, and her face twisted into an expression of overwhelmed, terrified pain, eyes shut tight and breathing choppy and fast. 

She lunged for her queen and grabbed her by the shoulders, about to yell in her face, when she realized that that would be the opposite of helping, it would only add to the din. So Rei just held her and cast about desperately for where the thread inevitably came out of the water somewhere else, and she couldn't find it, and couldn't find it, and couldn't--

No. There. A glimmer. And it led to the red-painted metal wreckage that was half-merged with the upended floor, and she squinted and could make out a shattered bedframe beneath that, and sodden, torn-up sheets and a thin summer blanket, and--

\--and bloodied bandages and a photo in a broken frame with the faces ruined by water damage and great age. And-- and one small shoe.

Then she looked around at the crowd overlapping with itself, utterly unconcerned with the damage and hell that was right in front of them, surrounding them, and how some of the dead and dying people impaled on the spikes of sword-floor _did_ look in that direction but it was with accusation, with hurt betrayal, with blame. And she processed the fact that no one was actually standing on the broken surface that gravity demanded they should be interacting with, and she swallowed a tiny shriek of understanding.

In an instant, she jammed her red high heels through the bottom of Serenity's silver shield bubble and planted her feet in the sharp and jagged riptide swirls of angry Earth, and she brought the pure wrath of her own red planet with her and let loose a whipcrack of expanding fire-wall to bake the floor solid, and she yanked Serenity down to Earth and yelled toward the cliffside car crash in the orphanage bedroom on the ancient battlefield, "TSUKINO GODDAMNED MAMORU, YOU FUCKING WELL KNOW WE'RE NOT ABOVE YOU OR YOUR PAIN, DON'T BE SUCH A FUCKING EMO BASTARD."

The din died down and Serenity untensed, abruptly leaning heavily on Rei and panting, dropping her arms to hug the golden thread to her chest, and silver tears dried in glittering tracks on her face. "Why--" she whispered, "why would he think that?"

"Because his heart is the Earth's heart, and the vast majority of humanity hasn't cared enough -- for too long -- to stop their selfish behavior and prevent the destruction going on right now. And he's not awake. And all he could tell was that we cared enough to look for part of him, but not to touch the rest. And--"

"Oh," said Serenity weakly, then looked down at the coiled thread around her wrist. " _Oh_." Her face screwed up again but she mostly kept from crying any more. "Mamo-chan," she choked out, "I didn't remember this was all you. I want to touch you! I always want to touch you! I'm coming! We're coming! Please..."

Slowly, the wreckage vanished, and the path through what was left of the upended floor was clear again, and the thread was aloft as if it had never been slack. Outside, the storm raged on and the shattering earth swallowed houses and vomited forth steam and pyroclastic ash and poison and molten rock, and hurricane winds grabbed trees like mighty hands and smashed them in fury against rocks and buildings and cars and people and animals, and salt covered rotting crops and flooded dens and--

\--and the thread led through it all, and Serenity kicked off her bright pearl and crystal slippers and walked forth barefoot, hems of her floating ephemeral gown dragging through the rot and mud and filth. She continued to wind the golden thread about her wrist, head held high and posture and expression now fierce. 

"Your heart is also my heart, Endymion! If they break, they break together, but we are too strong to stay broken! I'm coming!" she yelled into the deafening wind, and somehow, her words resonated across the nightmare landscape anyway.

"And so is chopped liver," Rei grumped briefly, not meaning it, really, but dear god when Usagi got like this all she wanted to do was pull her best friend's hair.

She'd do it later. Now was not the time.


	10. Mad Rush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Makoto, Nephrite, Haruka; Zoisite, Venus (cameo), Kunzite (cameo); Michiru, Jadeite; Hotaru (cameo), Small Lady (Chibiusa, cameo)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW:** Disaster horror continues; implicit orphaning; implicit death of an unnamed individual on screen.

**5\. Mad Rush**

Makoto's eyes widened as the deafening crack-BOOM that _wasn't hers_ was accompanied by a shifting of the floor, and screaming, and screaming being cut off. The building was collapsing. The _building was collapsing_ , they didn't have any more time, they couldn't get to everyone, and--

Nik and Haruka traded glances in an instant, and it was Haruka who swept in and gathered the closest batch of evacuees and screamed through the wind at Makoto, "SAILOR TELEPORT! NOW!" 

On and off, Makoto's relationship with Haruka had shifted and turned around, sometimes one of them the authority and sometimes the other, depending on the subject and timing and state of mind. Right now? The Senshi of Thunder was all too willing to take direction, because she couldn't think, she couldn't decide, she couldn't do anything-- she'd frozen. 

They'd gotten the group teleport down to a science over five hundred years. They could pull it off with only two of them, and carry a group of civilians besides.

Nik could only catch three on his own, so he did, and was gone in a red-gold shifting of light. As he faded out, he saw betrayed eyes looking at him from the inside of the building.

Of course he went back. Blink in, blink out. Blink in, blink out. 

He managed four more trips before the room had shifted enough that he couldn't actually tell if he'd materialize inside a piece of rebar, and he was already coughing caustic dust as he let go the last three.

One was a tiny child about Small Lady's size, bawling for his father. 

Nik stared. 

Makoto grabbed his arm before he could teleport to his death. "I've got him," she said, looking at him without seeing him. "Drink water, then go help Michiru."

He nodded blindly, then blinked out.

\-----

Zoisite had shut his emotions down on the third run out to grab more people. He couldn't think about Ami and he couldn't think about what they could have done differently, he couldn't think about the look on Kunzite's face, he couldn't think about what they'd had to do to Mamoru, he couldn't think about all the people they weren't saving. 

Venus was holding a makeshift dam in place with her chain, and Kunzite was teleporting people out, and Zoisite was swimming. He was the smallest of all three of them--

\--she made herself smaller still, and held her breath, and dove underneath the putrid, icy water to slither between pieces of collapsed wall and get at the teenager stuck in the air pocket-- and the motion caused the air to escape, water rushing in around a face devoid of reason from sheer panic. She grabbed for the kid's hand, and it clamped on hers like a vise, and the kid struggled and kicked and she tried to get him to stop so she could move the rebar off of him, but he wouldn't _stop struggling_ , and the rebar moved the wrong way and there was a crunch she could feel in her bones, and the water went red and the hand let go.

She couldn't think about it.

She didn't have a path out anymore. She teleported out before something fell to pin _her_.

\-----

Michiru held the sea at bay with her will alone, yelling. "Go THROUGH the FUCKING GATE!" she screamed at the huddled mass of terrified evacuees, and the sea looked horrifying, and _she_ was _terrifying_ , and no one moved.

"Come on, folks," came Jadeite's voice all of a sudden, out of absolutely nowhere, cheerful and calm. "She's magic, I'm magic, the gate's magic, and pretty much magic is all that's gonna help you guys get out of this alive at this point, so go on. There's a safe city on the other side. Anyone who can walk on their own, please help those who can't; don't run, we'll keep it away from you while you get through-- wouldn't want anyone trampled after all this trouble you've gone through to stay alive, right?"

Michiru watched, dumbfounded, as they _listened_ to him, scrambling to go, scrambling to get through-- but being careful of the others with them, helping the little and the old and the injured and the disabled-- and then she stared at Jadeite and showed her teeth.

Jadeite got the hint, and started freezing the sea-wall she'd built of water. "Sorry," he said sheepishly.

That's when Nephrite showed up, covered in caustic dust and coughing and hardened tear-tracks cemented to his face, and he looked at the two of them and at the refugees going through the gate, and he signed 'Guess you got this covered' and blinked out again.

" _Shitennou_ ," Michiru grumbled, finally able to relax slightly.

"Yes," agreed Jadeite.

\-----

"It's not the end of the world," Hotaru whispered to the pink-haired princess as she held her sobbing form close, enveloped in a protective embrace. "I would know."


	11. Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here / Insomniac Olympics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Rei, Serenity, 14-year-old Usagi, 16-year-old Mamoru, Ami, Zoisite

**6\. Dead Things / Insomniac Olympics**

It felt like they'd been walking for hours, but Serenity and Rei both knew that time ran differently in dreams than it did in waking, and after all, there was an awful lot that Mamoru was aware of on a mostly-unconscious level, most of the time, that was all going on at once outside -- and they had to process it in a linear fashion if they were going to keep their own psyches intact on their way to finding Mamoru's awareness, wherever he'd holed up in his own mind.

It hadn't been hours, it'd been less than ten minutes. Rei had opened one eye in the real world to check.

They'd witnessed the drowning of cities and islands, the breaking of dams and collapsing of buildings and bridges, the flooding of caves and the salting of fields, the rapid loss of coastline nearly everywhere; they'd seen the explosions of powerplants, the opening of massive rifts and sinkholes in the tortured continents, the births of volcanoes and the gut-wrenching preservation of cities and towns Pompeii-style, typhoons and hurricanes and blizzards and the terrifyingly swift crumbling of what was left of the edges of the ice caps; they'd seen ghosts of their friends dealing with the catastrophes where they could, but they knew it was just an awareness of them with no ability to interact.

Eventually they followed the thread into a burning old-growth forest and saw a flash of blue and white in the choking ash and smoke, and a glint of steel--

\--and Mars instinctively pulled the fire into herself, and it shouldn't have hurt, but it did. It burned her from the inside out, and she held on to it anyway to keep it from hurting Serenity like this. When the smoke cleared just enough, they saw her: a fourteen-year-old Usagi holding a test paper in one hand and Endymion's sword in the other. It was far too heavy for her, tip carving a rut in the forest floor behind her. She glanced back at them and threw the test paper away, then turned and held the sword improperly and tried very hard to both lift it and look menacing.

Neither worked.

Serenity was nonplussed.

Despite the burning pain consuming her, Rei could _see_ the series of question marks hanging over Serenity's head and trailing off into the distance, and she nearly screamed in frustrated impatience. Instead she managed to choke it down in order to preempt Usagi giving Usagi the third degree while Rei was suffering third degree internal burns. _"Are you going to let us past, Odango Atama?!"_ she demanded, letting indignation push away the strain in her voice.

"What are you doing there? Here? Not in _my_ head, I mean?" asked the queen, completely bewildered. "And why are you trying to protect Mamo-chan from _us_?"

"I'm not you, baka, I'm a symbolic representation of Mamoru's shame and feelings of helplessness and burden--"

"Hey!" Serenity balked, offended.

"Those are some pretty big words. _Definitely_ not you," Rei decided, trying and failing to shunt the alien heat into the ground, and _determinedly_ talking trash to avoid thinking she might be losing herself inside her best friend's husband's stupid emo guilt-trip mind.

"HEY!" Serenity yelled, turning to glare at Rei, then looking alarmed when she saw Mars glowing with heat and beginning to char like paper at the edges. "Rei-chan!!"

The frighteningly young doppelganger was still talking. "--that a fourteen-year-old girl he loved dearly put so much of herself on the line and acted with inhuman strength, courage, and grace, and he failed her so spectacularly then and continues to do so _even now_ , and he had the gall to make assumptions about her study habits and fuel her self-consciousness when he first met her--"

"You _STILL_ feel guilty about that? _SERIOUSLY?_ Okay _well_ if you're part of Mamoru's subconscious and Rei is hurting then you should _help me_ ," Serenity yelled in furious indignation, launching herself toward her friend and ripping off large parts of her voluminous skirts to dip them in a manky mud puddle and slap them on Rei.

"Ugh USAGIIII--" complained Rei (undeniably relieved), then stopped, because the eighth-grade version of Usagi had thrown away Endymion's sword and was stumbling her way over, crying silently; in her hands was a bucket of water, much like the ones she'd had to hold in the hallway when she was caught eating in class. She sloshed the entire thing onto Rei, and the fires consuming the forest and the Senshi of Mars died, exploding briefly in steam and then leaving sodden wreckage in their wake.

When the steam cleared, a sixteen-year-old Mamoru was left in the young Usagi's place. "I'm sorry," he cried, "I'm sorry! I just don't want-- I don't want you to get hurt coming in after me-- not again, not _again_ , and not when you're needed out there--"

In the ragged remains of her flowing Moon Royalty dress, Serenity tripped forward and caught the young version of her husband up in her small, strong arms, crying as silently as her counterpart had been. " _You're_ needed. I need you! Everyone needs you, Mamo-chan!" And then she drew back, sniffing hard and wiping her face on the back of her arm. "But I need real you. I need grown-up you. Let me help you carry this, my love-- we're stronger together. You know that."

Rei, wringing herself out, added with only slightly exaggerated impatience and poorly disguised relief, "And we have a serum Ami made that can shut off your powers partway, but it might be all the way which I'm told would be REALLY FAR from ideal, but even if it _is_ all the way, at least you'd keep freakout-queen on an even keel just by being awake, nevermind the Shitennou."

The sixteen-year-old boy took off his glasses and looked at the both of them, then scrubbed his face with a little handkerchief that had a bunny embroidered in the corner. "Okay," he finally said, then took a deep breath. "Okay. The more I flush the sedative out of my system, the worse it's going to get in here. You can-- you can come in the rest of the way, or--" His eyes slid to the golden thread in Serenity's hands. "Or you can wait here for the rest of me."

"We'll wait," said Rei at the same time as Serenity said, "I'll come get you."

Rei sighed through her teeth. "Okay, you go get him. You don't really need me here. I'll go back and help everyone else."

"Okay," said Mamoru in a small voice, which only made Rei grit her teeth more.

"STOP BEING SUCH A BABY YOU'RE FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OLD!" she yelled, stomping her foot and splashing ashy charcoal muck everywhere. "UGH. I'm OUT."

What they saw was her vanishing.

\--

"They're on their way," Rei told Ami irritably, standing up and brushing herself off, only to look down and see that her uniform was perfectly fine. Dirty, but not filthy-- just what she'd been putting it through outside the base in the middle of the end of the world. "I'm going back out. Can't Luna and Artemis run shit here? You should go out and help too."

"I'll come out in a moment. I want to make sure I don't have to use the serum on Endymion," Ami said, already somewhat relaxed, since Rei was both out early and cranky.

"Fine," said Rei, and stalked off toward the teleport gates, hands in fists at her sides.

Ami glanced over at her queen, perfectly still and holding her king's head in her lap, and then went back to rerouting feeds. She did, finally, call Luna and Artemis. They could leave Chibiusa and Hotaru and Setsuna, those three didn't need two of the best ops controllers cuddling them right now. Well, they probably did, but there were people dying. There were priorities.

\--

Soaking wet and smelling of copper and filth, Zoisite appeared in the command center in a flurry of the flower petals that signified death, and Ami thought to herself that the symbol hurt today more than it usually did, but she didn't say a word about it. Instead, she leaned to pull over and kiss the slight figure, whose strawberry blonde hair was dark and sticking to her once-cream-white uniform, plastered to her head and neck. Ami didn't say anything about the sob she swallowed from deep in Zoisite's chest, either, and her gloved hand knotted in the lank wet locks, and she deepened the kiss, and all of a sudden Zoisite was desperately clinging to her, crying silently as she kissed the Senshi of Wisdom back.

It was only seconds before they pulled away from each other by mutual unspoken agreement, but it was long enough. Zoisite let out a wet little laugh and wiped her face on Ami's fuku collar, then straightened, cape still stuck to her. She yanked her cape off with an abrupt little gesture and flung it to the floor to one side with a wet slop, out of the way of foot traffic.

"Can you pick up Luna and Artemis for me? Bring them back here? They're at Usagi-chan's place with Small Lady and Secchan and Hotaru-chan--"

Zoisite was gone before she even finished, and Ami looked back at Serenity and Endymion on the couch, biting her lip.


	12. Escape / Your Hand In Mine / Mishima/Closing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter cast: Mamoru, Usagi, King Endymion, Neo Queen Serenity; cameos: Zoisite, Luna, Artemis, Setsuna, Hotaru, Small Lady (Chibiusa)

**7\. Escape**

"It's so much easier--" Mamoru started, breathless, as they moved through a stream of silver and gold, Usagi still holding onto the golden thread; they still walked through the wreckage and the fire and flood, through the bodies and the chunks of ice and the polluted mess of lake and ocean, the boiling seas and toppled arcologies. They just moved faster, seamless and streamlined, and though they could see all of it and walked in its midst, it was through the lens of Usagi's hope and determination.

"--when we're together," Usagi finished gently, her white-gold hair and gown damp and muddy at the ends, and she glanced at him, and at his strong hands gripping the silver thread entwined with the one she held and gathered as they went. "It's not really easier. It's just that you have me to help you believe that it'll eventually be okay again, that life goes on. I know it's easy to get lost in the hopelessness, lost in the hurt. I know it's hard for you to let go of the hurt. But we're not really letting go of it, we're just putting it aside for now. You're good at this, Mamo-chan. It's not a fun thing to be good at, but you've always been good at putting aside the pain and soldiering through..."

"Even if you never wanted me to be a soldier," Mamoru said softly, eyes lifting toward the terminus.

After a moment, Usagi said matter-of-factly, "I was fourteen. I had no idea how long the war would last. I had no idea that doctors needed to be soldiers sometimes, too."

Mamoru was quiet for a little after that, and then he said, sounding more like himself, "Once we save everyone we can, we're going to have to look at putting everyone to sleep for a while so we can clean the planet up."

"Yes," said Serenity, her voice calm. "And I think we should let Small Lady sleep with them. She's had to live the same years over too many times, and she'll be safe until everything's all right."

The heartscape they trudged through shuddered briefly, then calmed, and finally, the darkness cleared enough-- and the rubble shifted enough-- for them to see a softly glowing golden sphere ahead. 

"All right," said Endymion, voice calm and steady. "Then wake me up, my love. I can help now."

Their steps slowed, and Serenity put her hand to the side of the golden sphere, delicate fingers pressing through its surface, and she stood on tiptoes and turned her face up to Endymion's. He bent to meet her lips--

 

 

**8\. Your Hand In Mine**

In the real world, Serenity's head bowed to kiss Endymion, and his eyes opened.

There was a heartbeat of blind, golden-eyed panic, and then silver light enveloped them both, and his eyes were blue and his face was determined. In that instant, his clothes shifted from the dark colors he'd been wearing to the spotless white tailcoat and tuxedo, with its lavender cape, that he hadn't worn in hundreds of years-- not since the first time, not since Helios presented him with his sceptre.

Zoisite arrived with Luna and Artemis hanging on to him, holding Setsuna's and Hotaru's hands, Small Lady clinging to Hotaru like a baby monkey, and his face cleared-- was clearer than it had been in hours and hours, and Setsuna looked actively delighted: there was her King, after so long waiting.

Ami's shoulders relaxed as she looked back at the couch, and she opened her mouth to say something, but Neo Queen Serenity beat her to it. "We're on our way," she said with a small smile.

King Endymion sat up and took his Queen's hand. They both stood, and for all his royal dignity, there was a little bit of sheepishness mixed in with the determination. "See you soon," he said, and the two of them vanished in a bright flash.

 

**9\. Mishima/Closing**

A massive typhoon and a number of tsunamis hit what was left of the nearest coasts, preceding a rolling series of magnitude 8+ quakes. Despite the best efforts of the Inners, Outers, Shitennou, and the King and Queen, the string of compounding disasters was unstoppable, and they couldn't even keep up with them. Towns were washed away. Hurricanes gathered and lashed out inland, island nations were drowned, countless people lost their lives.

Serenity and the Senshi tried to move as many people as they could to the Moon, or direct them to the reinforced caves annexed to Elysion-- all were willing by then, but too many hadn't gone when there was still time, wouldn't leave everything they had and everything they knew. They'd been trying for decades, and now, there were only a relative handful of people left that they could save. 

Endymion and the Shitennou tried to get the Earth herself to cooperate, aided by Helios, and shunt what groups they came across into the Elysian caves-- it was a long and exhausting process, which wouldn't even be completed once everyone they could save was saved, but gradually it worked.

Finally, the toxicity of the air and water was too high to sustain the lives of any of people left with beating hearts, and the protectors of the planet came together inside the relentless storm of Elysion's distress, deep in the Earth's magical heart.

In a circle of combined light, Sailor Crystals and bright emerald-cut gemstone souls held up high and called on to give as much power as they could to the Silver and Golden Crystals, the Joined Court of the Earth and Moon flooded the planet with a wave of strength and preservation. The power was elemental and raw, was symbolic and physical, held love and life and virtues, and had at its core the entwined hearts of Home and Heaven--


	13. Part 3: After the End, Before the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue parts:  
> 1) Endymion, Kunzite  
> 2) Summary  
> 3) Usagi, Minako  
> 4) Nephrite, Makoto  
> 4.5) A sad thing with doodles  
> 5) Soundtrack

## Part 3: Epilogue

### Scenes from the end of the Last October, 2499

**1\. Burial on the Presidio Banks / Dead Things**

There was so much work to do. Endymion was so tired, so very, very tired. He hadn't even been with everyone for the first part of it, and the shame showed on his face, so he turned it away from Kunzite as he crouched to put his hands to the broken ground, dig his fingers in the muddy, bloody earth.

As the golden glow grew around them, and Endymion shut out his sight and his hearing and held his breath against the smell, pulling in the wounded senses of the planet itself, he felt Kunzite's hand on his shoulder in addition to the welcome weight of Kunzite's attention focusing sharply on him alone.

He choked back a sound that could have been a laugh and could have been distress, and Kunzite's hand tightened.

"You're not alone," the taller man said, his voice a low and solid thing, something Endymion could almost lean on in and of itself. "You weren't alone to stand against the entire world this time, and you aren't alone to rebuild it. Never again, my King."

The King's consciousness spread through the ground, searching for pockets of life frozen in crystal from that last moment of power wielded against chaos, and diligently marked the precise location of each, so he could pull them up or relay the coordinates to the others to teleport out. 

After a long moment, he said slowly, "I know. I just-- I haven't processed any of it yet. I have no idea how long this will take us. The rebuilding. How many people we failed. How many whole villages and towns and _islands_ were wiped off the face of my planet. How many _cities_." In between the words, the pain of the Earth built up and up, and he shivered, sudden and intense, and didn't realize he was crying, a little.

He felt fingers beneath his chin, and opened his gold-flecked blue eyes and looked up at his eldest guardian.

Kunzite knelt and reached to touch his face, to brush at sticky salt tear-tracks with hands callused from pen and sword and rescues. The air held the scent of salt seas and rot, of strange vegetation and of death, of burning plastic and forest fires and sodden caustic dust, and for right now his King was only Mamoru. Only the boy who'd grown up alone and took time to do everything with exquisite care-- who might have all his friends now, but who, inside, would always be a little of what he had been.

Mamoru held his breath again and looked only at _him_ , letting the sense of Kunzite's focus and stability flood him. He let it distract him from the planet still groaning beneath them and the echoes of the pleas of the dead and dying, the voices of accusing ghosts, the heavy expectation of those they'd saved at the last possible second and frozen in crystal.

None of it could really be taken away, and Mamoru wouldn't have let it go entirely even if he could. But for a moment, he would let Kunzite drown it for him so he could take a breath in the quiet.

Finally, he just bowed his head and leaned into Kunzite's side, contact still maintained, and he shuddered as he let out the air from his lungs. A shield, again, always-- and always when he needed exactly that taste of still silence, that particular flavor of a frozen moment in time, of the world holding its breath. His voice, then, was an absent ghost of a thing: "We knew something would happen, but we thought it would be sudden and be done. But that was so long ago--"

Running his fingers through his King's hair, Kunzite said quietly, "It was so long ago that it became a rote assumption. In the meantime, yes, you thought you could save everyone, save everything. You always do, the both of you, and you give that confidence and hope to the others."

He fell silent for a moment, breathing in the air that was tainted with destruction and death, listening to the slow boom of the ocean tide into the shell of the stadium nearby. His hand stayed in that hair, previously always black as a raven's wing, which only this week had been shot through with salt white. It was merely an outward sign of the terrible stress that the implacable cascade of tragedies, falling like dominoes, had levied on the planet and her King, her Queen and their Court.

"But this was a long time coming. You knew how precarious the situation was. You knew you would have to face it, Endymion, and that not even the efforts of all of us combined could prevent it. You still did the right thing, trying to mitigate it. And you could not have done so if you had let yourself connect the dots. You would have killed yourself trying to stop what you could not."

Then Endymion was quiet, but through that contact, he let Kunzite feel what he felt; he let Kunzite see that his words were having their intended effect: reasoning him past the shock of stopping to take stock of a lost world. Giving him a route out of it that didn't involve sedation or drinking the draught Ami had prepared--

He didn't want to take that route any more than he wanted to be put under again, leave everyone hanging again; he was grateful for Ami's medicine, but didn't want to cut himself off from the planet; he didn't want to leave the shock behind, either, and feel everything screaming and burning and drowning, and make himself stand up straight in front of it, but he always did, didn't he? Even if his Usako had to pick up the pieces of what was left of him afterwards. And the worst of it was over. This aftermath and the promise of endless years of rebuilding were agonizing, but he could bear it. He could. And everyone needed him.

Silently, Kunzite reminded him again-- this time with his heart only, and with the same depth of regret and gratitude that he always had whenever he let himself come anywhere near the subject-- that this time Endymion wasn't even close to alone, and that these days, 'not alone' was so much bigger-- that it was all right for him to need everyone in return, and that they'd all be there together, every step of the way.

 

**2\. With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept**

They had, with the power of all of them together, grown crystals around the bodies of the people who could still be saved, even those barely clinging to life. With the King's sense of land and stone and life, and with the all-seeing fires of Mars, they'd located and unearthed every one of those crystals. With the vast database of Mercury containing names and DNA and census data, they'd begun to build a toll of the dead and an index of the living: people to remember and people to help acclimate once it was safe to awaken and heal them. Once the lists were as complete as they could make them, they'd present them to the evacuees and give them the option to sleep alongside the survivors in stasis, and awaken when the world was rebuilt, or stay awake and help-- for all the long decades or centuries it might take to do so. They were informed that a process was being developed to extend their lives for those centuries, so they'd be there to see the culmination of their work, and the awakening of their fellows.

Some chose to sleep; some chose to sleep only because they were shown that the daughter of two of their saviors would sleep also; some chose to stay and see it through, all for reasons as varied as the people themselves.

For now, the ragged courts of Earth and Moon had a moment to breathe, to take stock of themselves, to grieve, to cope-- to put in place the methods they'd use for the coming years to make sure they didn't fall apart unless they had time and space to do so.

 

**3\. Awake**

For now, the groups were split between Earth and Moon, some recovering and some still working-- those for whom work was catharsis, work was comfort, couldn't sleep except in small bouts of complete exhaustion: two or four hour naps at the best. 

Right now, Kunzite was stuck to Endymion like glue, enabling the King's work ethic until he could tell, over and over, that the young-looking man with the salt-and-pepper hair had reached his limit, and then making him take breaks and rest. Nephrite was splitting his time between fussing over Endy and being a crying mess on Makoto, who was also handling Earthside coordination with Setsuna, gentler faces and methods for dealing with grief the ones that the survivors in the caves could most easily feel safe with; Rei was handling the spiritual needs and coordinating surviving spiritual leaders of the populations of both Earth and Moon, sharing time.

Haruka and Michiru were on the moon, and so were Ami and Sander, all of them comfortable with the technology there, and the least willing to sleep until they'd done as much as they possibly could.

Jadeite was up there to be the face and personality that the survivors could most comfortably interact with, making at least daily broadcasts with news updates and encouragement, sometimes more, and he'd identified the steadiest volunteers amongst the general populace to organize things and help people in smaller groups. He was even making the rounds of what amounted to town hall meetings, and occasionally even had time to meet with people one on one. Things were in hand, more or less, at least temporarily stable.

Serenity and Venus were on the Moon too, with Venus taking on the duty of making sure Serenity slept off her massive power expenditure, and they were currently quartered in Serenity's old princess suite with her Senshi's rooms all adjacent. It helped with Venus' mindset, being there, because it was easier for her to think in the utterly practical terms of her first life, and keep from being too upset by Serenity's own upsets to actually get work done.

It was also beautiful, and it also hurt, because even though everything in their lives was so different now from the way it had been the first time, every room and corridor and street and shop was a reminder of the long-ago dead, who wouldn't ever return.

"Minako-chan, I'm tired."

Serenity's voice was small and lost. Venus looked up and saw not Serenity, but Usagi in the the lovely carved arch of the doorway to her bedroom, wearing pretty summer pajamas that the Senshi of Love and Beauty was _still_ jealous of, and she was playing with the end of one of her silver twintails.

It didn't escape Venus' notice that Usagi had waited until Endymion had left for Elysion with Small Lady, Kunzite, and Hotaru to show any of this, and all of a sudden, she was very tired too.

"Ser--" she started, then cut herself off as Usagi's huge blue eyes glittered and threatened to overflow in silent tears, by far the very worst kind. "Usagi-chan. I know, love. That's why you're supposed to be sleeping," she said very gently.

"I can't. There are ghosts here and they're the wrong ghosts," Usagi said, not meeting Venus' eyes. Not meeting them, because she knew she'd still see Venus and not Minako, no matter what the other woman was wearing. She took a short, small breath, then looked up. "Mina... can we just-- pretend? For a little while? That we're at my house, and Mama and Papa are downstairs and Shingo is down the hall, and we're having a sleepover and have to be quiet?"

The tears began to escape, running silver down her pretty too-young face with its too-old eyes. "And Naru can't come because her mama is on the way with her to Paris or something? That-- that all the enemies are gone, and-- and saving the world makes it stay saved-- and we're together and can still have fun?"

Usagi was crying for real now, and Minako got up, pulled almost magnetically to her Qu-- to her princess-- no, to her best friend, always, her most important person. She wrapped her arms around the still shorter woman, cradling her silver head against her shoulder, and she murmured, "And we brought the boys back maybe a year ago, and they're still so awkward, and Mamoru's so happy they're there and they still can't believe it? I remember you were jealous for five whole minutes until you realized he could still be happy even if you were spending more time with us, and he didn't have to be awkward at girls' night--"

There was a wet-sounding little giggle into Minako's shoulder. "--when every night was girls' night--"

"--that's right," said Minako, smiling against Usagi's hair, the tension running out of her shoulders. This she could do. She'd do anything Usagi needed, anything, and this was something Usagi needed, and it wasn't even something that secretly hurt her, that she had to hide from Usagi or Usagi would hide her own tears to avoid hurting her. "And then the more we all got drunk together, lived and worked and went to college together, the more they remembered who they were in a context that wasn't just their prince, and remembered who they were in this life before they were taken, and the more we figured out we actually did like them--"

"--and then Mamo-chan finished his degree at Keio and went to New York to work on specializing, and we all piled on the plane with him except Jay and Mako-chan--"

"--and we went to meet them when they got off the boat with a giant boat cake and a-- a PLANE PIZZA... do you think they've forgiven us?"

Now, Usagi was giggling too hard to answer, mouth pressed into Minako's shoulder to stifle it, eyes squeezed shut and shoulders shaking.

"Me either," said Minako, satisfied. "Come on, we can indulge. No one else knows about it, so it's okay if we eat the ice cream I stashed up here two weeks ago. It's all Starbucks-Disney Unicorn Pumpkin Crunch, so I have no idea how it'll taste, but--"

Not trusting her voice, but smiling through her tears, Usagi nodded and withdrew, then padded barefoot after Minako into the kitchen. They'd eat it out of the carton with spoons and try and remember the names of the idols they'd followed, and probably make fun of Seiya and Yaten and Taiki, and definitely talk about how right Ami was about Mamoru when Fiore was around--

\--and it wasn't denial or regression. It was just that sometimes, grownups needed stories and hugs and ice cream, too, and this was a precious respite where the two exhausted young-old girls could actually give them to each other, then fall asleep in each other's arms. 

Even after the world ends.

 

**4\. Soon It Will Be Cold Enough to Build Fires**

Nik sat on the edge of a collapsed bridge with a waterstained notebook, carefully dried out, and a pen he'd found floating in a clogged gutter on higher land. He'd finished painstakingly writing out what he wanted to write and still wasn't satisfied with it, but couldn't actually get his brain to focus on what the thing needed to be perfect. So he'd crossed it out and scrawled something beneath it, and was now doodling in the margins, entire face drawn into a fierce scowl.

Makoto came up behind him, then slid down gracefully to sit beside him and lean on his arm and shoulder. She looked at the doodles first, and a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You still want a dog, huh? We can get a dog. I'm sure there are lots of dogs who want homes right now."

"I want a dog plantation. Like a dalmatian plantation but all kinds of dogs. And cats. And farm animals. But lots of dogs."

"How about we start with a dog."

"Okay," said Nik, and his hand fell still.

Makoto didn't push; she read over his shoulder instead. As she read, her eyes welled and her face screwed up, breathing turning into a heavy and difficult thing that refused to have anything to do with her nose, and she sat up a little. She brought her wrist up to scrub at her eyes with the sleeve of Nik's stolen shirt.

After a moment, he looked up and aside at her, and his eyes were too bright, and the color was high in his face, splotchy. His long wavy hair stuck to his face a little bit. "It's not good enough," he said, his voice thick. "It's no better than the stupid drunk iambic ranting I used to do. This is too big for shit like this."

"Used to do?" hiccuped Mako with an incredulous half-laugh. "The last time you did that was two months ago. But it _is_ better. It's good. It's better than good. Only--"

She swallowed; she reached up to scrub her face with her sleeve again. "Only you can't read it to them. Nik, you can't let them read it. It's too true and they already hurt and this hurts too."

"I can't keep it, either," said Nik, face turning away swiftly as he blinked.

Makoto brought her hands up and leaned forward and around to gently turn his face back to hers. Utterly miserably, he let her, and she saw what he knew she would: everything he was feeling was on his face. It was in his eyes, was in the twist of his mouth and the salt tracking ticklish into the corners and creases, in the existence of those creases. Every piece of failure, every life unsaved, every cheer he hadn't been able to give Endymion or Makoto herself, every false hope and happiness, every self-deception, every hopeless reading of the stars. And this, the thing he wrote that wasn't good enough.

"So let it go," she whispered. "Let the sea take and bury it with them, and move forward with me. I don't want to let go either, but there's no time left for anything but the future."

In the bright afternoon, a torn-off piece of notebook paper danced away on the breeze, headed out over the quiet sea.

\-----

>   
>  ~~If words cannot a salve for grieving be,~~  
>  ~~Then eulogies are worthless to the heart.~~  
>  ~~A dim improvement is the elegy,~~  
>  ~~Which melody and meter set apart.~~
> 
>  ~~Apart stand we who can't conceive the thought~~  
>  ~~Of comfort granted by a steady hand,~~  
>  ~~For in this moment which our failures wrought~~  
>  ~~No knowing skin our contact could withstand.~~
> 
>  ~~To all the painful lasts throughout these years,~~  
>  ~~And all the friends and family we have lost,~~  
>  ~~We owe a debt of futures without fear--~~  
>  ~~So grief therefore be swift, and mind its cost.~~
> 
>  ~~But oh, a living breath of time we'll take~~  
>  ~~To put to rest all those who will not wake.~~  
> 
> 
> #### we tried we tried we tried

 

_~fin~_

* * *

### Soundtrack:

  
_Part One_  
**Morning Passages -** Philip Glass  
**They Move on Tracks of Never-Ending Light -** This Will Destroy You  
**Time -** Hans Zimmer  
**Human Qualities -** Explosions in the Sky  
**Cracks -** Flux Pavilion Mix  
**Remember Me as a Time of Day -** Explosions in the Sky  
**Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean -** Explosions in the Sky  
_Part Two_  
**Disintegration Anxiety -** Explosions in the Sky  
**Dream Is Collapsing -** Hans Zimmer  
**Mombasa -** Hans Zimmer  
**Kerala -** Bonobo  
**Doomsday -** Nero  
**Mad Rush -** Philip Glass  
**Dead Things -** Philip Glass  
**Insomniac Olympics -** Blockhead  
**Escape -** Philip Glass  
**Your Hand In Mine -** Explosions in the Sky  
**Mishima/Closing -** Philip Glass  
_Part Three_  
**Burial on the Presidio Banks -** This Will Destroy You  
**Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here -** 65daysofstatic  
**Awake -** Tycho  
**With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept -** Explosions in the Sky  
**Soon It Will Be Cold Enough To Build Fires -** Emancipator  | 

### Alternate Soundtrack:

_Something Vague_ by Bright Eyes  
_Miami 2017_ by Billy Joel  
_Float On_ by Modest Mouse  
_Imitation of Life_ by REM  
_In Our Darkest Hour_ by Phantom Planet  
_Wandering Star_ by Portishead  
_Last Stop This Town_ or _Going To Your Funeral_ by Eels  
_Pitseleh_ or _No Name #5_ by Elliott Smith  
_Something is Wrong_ by Phantom Planet  
_Please Let That Be You_ by the Rentals  
_Try Not to Breathe_ by REM  
_Daysleeper_ by REM  
_Smile Like You Mean It_ by the Killers  
_This Is Not the End_ or _Time Won't Let Me Go_ by the Bravery  
_Empty City Lights_ by Hearts of Black Science  
_Leave in Silence_ by Depeche Mode  
_Haunted_ by Love and Rockets  
_Fragile_ by Sting  
_Time Is Running Out_ by Muse  
_Wave of Mutilation_ by the Pixies  
_I Can't_ by Radiohead  
_Present Tense_ by Radiohead  
_Little Black Submarines_ by the Black Keys  
_Tart_ by Elvis Costello  
_Every You Every Me_ by Placebo  
_3012_ by the Push Kings  
_Avril 14th_ by Aphex Twin  
_Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)_ by the Arcade Fire  
_Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)_ by the Arcade Fire  
_Equinox_ by the Maple Faust   
---|---  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soz for the comparatively short part three, like, i had check-ins planned for literally everyone but i ended up just SO DONE lol <3
> 
> hope you guys cleared out your sinuses over the course of reading this fic. hope no one this fic would have actively damaged read it.
> 
> hope i can sleep sometime this year 8D


End file.
